Related papers: Randomness in appendage coordination facilitates s…

Although robots with flexible bodies are superior in terms of the contact and adaptability, it is difficult to control them precisely. On the other hand, human beings make use of the surrounding environments to stabilize their bodies and…

Animals can finely modulate their leg stiffness to interact with complex terrains and absorb sudden shocks. In feats like leaping and sprinting, animals demonstrate a sophisticated interplay of opposing muscle pairs that actively modulate…

Elastic structures can be designed to exhibit precise, complex, and exotic functions. While recent work has focused on the quasistatic limit governed by force balance, the mechanics at a finite driving rate are governed by Newton's…

A system comprised of an elastic solid and its response to an external random force sequence is shown to behave based on the principles of the theory of algorithmic complexity and randomness. The solid distorts the randomness of an input…

We have developed an experimental setup of very simple self-propelled robots to observe collective motion emerging as a result of inelastic collisions only. A circular pool and commercial RC boats were the basis of our first setup, where we…

Passive tumbling uses natural forces like gravity for efficient travel. But without an active means of control, passive tumblers must rely entirely on external forces. Northeastern University's COBRA is a snake robot that can morph into a…

A widely held assumption on network dynamics is that similar components are more likely to exhibit similar behavior than dissimilar ones and that generic differences among them are necessarily detrimental to synchronization. Here, we show…

Operating robots precisely and at high speeds has been a long-standing goal of robotics research. Balancing these competing demands is key to enabling the seamless collaboration of robots and humans and increasing task performance. However,…

While Reinforcement Learning (RL) has achieved remarkable progress in legged locomotion control, it often suffers from performance degradation in out-of-distribution (OOD) conditions and discrepancies between the simulation and the real…

The concept of random dynamical system is a comparatively recent development combining ideas and methods from the well developed areas of probability theory and dynamical systems. Due to our inaccurate knowledge of the particular physical…

Locomotion in microgravity often relies on sparsely and irregularly arranged anchors, motivating grasp-based mobility with multiple limbs. In this setting, dynamic locomotion is feasible only through deliberate regulation of both anchored…

Mobile robots, especially those driving outdoors and in unstructured terrain, sometimes suffer from failures and errors in locomotion, like unevenly pressurized or flat tires, loose axes or de-tracked tracks. Those are errors that go…

In this paper, we consider a stochastic process that may experience random reset events which relocate the system to its starting position. We focus our attention on a one-dimensional, monotonic continuous-time random walk with a constant…

Achieving robust legged locomotion on complex terrains poses challenges due to the high uncertainty in robot-environment interactions. Recent advances in bipedal and quadrupedal robots demonstrate good mobility on rugged terrains but rely…

Some of the most challenging environments on our planet are accessible to quadrupedal animals but remain out of reach for autonomous machines. Legged locomotion can dramatically expand the operational domains of robotics. However,…

We study the collective motion of autonomous mobile agents on a ringlike environment. The agents' dynamics is inspired by known laboratory experiments on the dynamics of locust swarms. In these experiments, locusts placed at arbitrary…

There is a belief that complexity and chaos are essential for adaptability. But life deals with complexity every moment, without the chaos that engineers fear so, by invoking goal-directed behaviour. Goals can be programmed. That is why…

Terrestrial animals often must self-right from an upside-down orientation on the ground to survive. Here, we compared self-righting strategies of the Madagascar hissing, American, and discoid cockroaches on a challenging flat, rigid,…

Many day-to-day activities require the dexterous manipulation of a redundant humanoid arm in complex 3D environments. However, position regulation of such robot arm systems becomes very difficult in presence of non-linear uncertainties in…

Bipedal humanoid robots must precisely coordinate balance, timing, and contact decisions when locomoting on constrained footholds such as stepping stones, beams, and planks -- even minor errors can lead to catastrophic failure. Classical…